ARCADE: A DIGITAL SALON, STANFORD UNIVERSITY -- Mohammad Salama, professor of Arabic at San Francisco State University, wrote this op-ed for Aracde: A Digital Salon. The blog is published by Stanford University’s Department of English.
“Some may have inherited the world from their racist ancestors, but we are all now borrowing it from our children and we have a responsibility to leave it a better and more humane place for them,” Salama writes. “As we mourn the death of 50 innocent Muslims and the shattering of hundred of families at the hands of a hateful, ignorant terrorist, we have no choice but to come together to learn, to gain knowledge and to seek knowledge of and from one another. No learning is achievable without learning of the other, without empathy or charity, and without being responsible for the wellbeing of the other. The Qur’an says in Q.5:32: ‘Whoever kills an innocent life, it is as though he has killed all humanity, and whoever saves a life, it is as though he has saved all humanity.’ Our responsibility for the wellbeing and for the life of others, the utterly others, precisely because of their difference, is what makes us worthy of the gift of life.”